* Biju Chacko [linux-india] <03/07/01 14:43 +0530>:
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 01:13:18PM +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I have to configure mail server in our laboratory. I come across these two
> > MTAs viz., EXIM and SENDMAIL. Can any one suggest which one is better with
> > respect to security and performance (any other MTA's)
> This is probably more on-topic for LIG or LIH. A _very_ dangerous question to
> ask. Almost as bad as vi-vs-emacs. ;-)
Yeah, sure.
> Frankly, if you aren't going to make a career of admin-ing mail servers, you'd
> better stay away from Sendmail. I'd suggest Postfix -- http://www.postfix.org
Now you are starting another religious war, amigo :) Sendmail is perfectly
easy to configure if you stay away from
1. linuxconf (or sysman on compaq alphas, or $gui_config_tool)
2. vi sendmail.cf
Use only sendmail.mc and you'll be pretty happy... it makes things quite
easy. As for exim, I prefer it to postfix for quite a few reasons (solid
queue management tools, a slightly more _IMO_ user friendly config etc)
> On the other hand, unless you're talking about thousands of users, any of the
> major MTAs (Sendmail, Qmail, Postfix or Exim) would be equivalent. Just use
> whatever comes pre-configured with your distro.
Sendmail, in that case. And "use what comes preconfigured with your distro"
is a major hassle :)
Redhat, for example, ships a copy of sendmail that listens only on 127.0.0.1
by default (you have to regenerate sendmail.mc to make that "anti-newbie
protection" go away).
What makes it even more sad is that the sendmail-cf rpm is *not* installed by
default, which several newbies don't find out till they do an "m4
/etc/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf" (yeah - the old paths are still
preserved in redhat's sendmail package ...)
Some of the commercial unices (AIX, for example) still ship sendmails that
default to open relaying - and again, the sendmail m4 macros and such have to
be installed manually (bos.tcp.net.adp I think, as I mentioned AIX).
Even if there are no such hassles, what usually comes preinstalled in a
distro might not always suit your needs - even in a lab environment.
The best way is to pick whatever mailserver you want and compile from source.
--suresh
--
Suresh Ramasubramanian <--> mallet <at> efn <dot> org
EMail Sturmbannfuhrer, Lower Middle Class Unix Sysadmin
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